


Human Blue

by LustMonster, Schach



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:35:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LustMonster/pseuds/LustMonster, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schach/pseuds/Schach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt doesn't want to be blue. Charles wants his nephew to know that blue is beautiful, and obviously the only way to prove that is to paint himself blue. He doesn't count on encountering his older sister's friend, Erik, while in such a state, but he does anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Blue

**Author's Note:**

> This summary sucks and will more than likely be changed. Haha. Once I, or dahlink, come up with a better one.

“I shouldn’t be back too late,” Raven calls down the hall, digging frantically through the pile of jeans on her bedroom floor to find her keys, “Class is over around five.”

“That’s fine, I’m sure we’ll be plenty entertained,” Charles replies. Taking his time as he removes his coat and gloves, sticking the gloves in his coat pockets before hanging them in the hall closet, having just returned from his part time job at the library.

“I don’t know about that,” Raven sighs, exiting her room, holding the keys triumphantly in her clenched hand, “Kurt’s been a little testy ever since we went to the doctors yesterday and I can’t figure out why.”

“Where is he? Uncle Charles knows how to cheer him up,” Charles smiled, peering into the living room, expecting to see the blue face of his little nephew grinning back up at him.

“He’s lurking somewhere around here, my little terror. But see if you can, okay? I’ve got to go or I’ll be late to class, but call if there’s an emergency and he’s got a new bag of animal crackers on top of the fridge if he’s good,” Raven rattles off, checking off things on her finger in that motherly way as she gives him her usual babysitting spiel before kissing him on the cheek and rushing out the door.

Charles watches her back out of the driveway through the window on the side of the door, thinking that he’ll bundle Kurt up and let him play in the snow while he shovels the driveway, probably only able to coax the little boy in after with the promise of hot chocolate and miniature marshmallows. Maybe even a candy cane if he can sneak one off the tree without Raven noticing.

Things had been really hard for his older sister for a while, going through a difficult pregnancy alone at 19 when Azazel had begged off fatherhood, claiming to be too young and cutting off all communication. She’d been kicked out of the house for having a child out of wedlock, and had dropped out of school to work full time, saving money to support herself and her child as they moved from temporary place to temporary place. She’d been really strong about it though, and matured beautifully despite the short time frame she had to do it in.

Now, her baby turning four in two weeks, and Charles back from early graduation (at the ripe age of 19) she was starting to turn things around for the both of them, talking Charles into going half on a rather spacious condominium, and getting her GED before finally starting college the previous fall to see what she wanted to study, finally settling on the arts, the house covered in art projects an indication of how in love she was with her Major.

Luckily for Charles, everything worked out just as well for him. Having been homeschooled, he didn’t know very many people, and having flown over the pond to attend Oxford for his undergraduate studies, he knew even fewer people in the States than he had before. Moving into a place with Raven, where he had the fully furnished basement to himself and could see the only relatives he cared to see daily, had been nothing short of perfect.

“Kurt?” he calls merrily, hoping to draw the boy out from wherever he’s hiding, “Kurt, Uncle Charles is home. Do you want to go play in the snow? We can make angels!”

There is no answer, and no scent of brimstone throughout the first level of the house so he heads slowly up the stairs, listening for the sound of little feet padding across the floor, or a tail accidentally hitting something as the little boy strolls past.

“Kurt?” he calls again as he enters the boy’s bedroom, positioned directly across the hall from the bathroom and right next to Raven’s brimming den/office/art room.

He hears a muffled sniffle coming from somewhere in the room and he begins to look around for the little furry blue body that is nowhere to be seen. Kurt isn’t in his toy chest, his closet or under the bed. He isn’t hiding behind the curtains or behind his dresser. Which only leaves one place.

“Kurt, are you up there? What’s wrong?” Charles asks. He moves across the room, slipping his shoes off to stand on the bed, peering intently into the massive ‘pet net’ containing a stuffed version of every blue animal in existence that hangs over the small space ship spaced bed.

His only reply is a small sniffle directly in front of him. He frowns, sticking his hands in amongst the toys, searching for the only furry body with a pulse. When he finds him, he gently pulls him forward, surprised not to find a blue face peering sadly down at him, but a blue face covered in every shade of marker possible.

“Oh Kurt, what did you do?” Charles moans, cradling the squirming boy close, climbing down from the bed and heading into the bathroom to start some bath water.

“No Blue, Sharles,” Kurt pouts, shaking his head angrily, “No Blue.”

“Well, Kurt, darling, why not?” He is really confused as to what is going on because yes, Kurt has drawn on himself before, just like every other child his age, but never with such adamant words about why.

“No Blue. Mom no blue, Sharles no blue,” he pauses a moment to sniffle, little bottom lip quivering as he continues, “Kurt no blue, Sharles.”

“Okay Kurt. But it’s okay to be blue. Mommy’s blue sometimes, hunny,” Charles sighs, trying to make it all okay for his impressionable nephew, at the same time wondering where this absurd concept has come from. Raven and himself certainly haven’t brought it to the child’s attention, and he know’s Kurt wouldn’t have just come up with it on his own.

“No blue,” Kurt harrumphs, suddenly vanishing from sight in a cloud of red brimstone. Charles hates when he does that, he is going to get bath soap and water all over wherever he teleports.

~~~

Hours later, when Raven gets home the front drive still hasn’t been shoveled and Charles has spent more than half of the day trying to convince Kurt to go outside with him and failing miserably because all the boy will do is shout, “NO, BLUE SHARLES,” and teleport to some other part of the house.

“I told you he was being difficult,” Raven says listening to Charles describe his day, after she’d tucked in and read Kurt a bedtime story, joining Charles in the kitchen for carrots and french dip, an odd enough tradition that had carried over from childhood.

“He kept saying he didn’t want to be blue,” Charles puzzles aloud, “Have you said anything to him about being blue?”

“Of course not,” Raven glares at him around a mouth full of carrot, “why on earth would I do that?”

Offense and defensiveness radiate from every inch of Raven’s posture, her lips turned down at the corners, her skin flickering, scales raising like hackles. Charles frowns right back, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at her assumption. “I’m not saying you said anything _negative_ , but something clearly gave him the idea it’s negative. Or some _one_ and it isn’t as if Kurt is around a plethora of people.” 

In fact, the boy’s entire world is essentially Charles and Raven, though the elder sibling had made references in the past to a classmate of hers Kurt showed a fondness for. However, she’d also said the man was a mutant--and rather vocal homosuperior supremacist at that--so he doubts this man could be the cause.

Raven thinks about it, the tenseness ebbing away like a receding tide, her shoulders relaxing, spine curving. She squints into space thoughtfully, chewing her brother’s words over with the carrots.

“Nothing I can think of . . . Oh jeez, Charles, turn that shit off.” She makes a slicing gesture in the direction of the television, puffing out her cheeks in exasperation. “I don’t need to hear the ramblings of William fucking Stryker again, that’s the same segment from yesterday.”

Charles looks at the time, then Raven, then back at the television, still playing Stryker’s hate-filled rant. He pulls a face, turning the volume up despite the way Raven scowls and turning his attention to it.

“. . . _like this ‘Azazel’ are the reason we advocate mutant registration. Not only are mutants an aberration, but they’re_ dangerous. _What if this_ man,” he says the word like one would an epithet, also as though he uses the term loosely, “ _decides he wants to assassinate the president? Who would be able to stop him? He’s proved he’s dangerous enough, holding Senator Kelly’s daughter hostage to ‘prove a point.’ For Christ’s sakes they’re_ mutants, _unnatural occurences that should be monitored like lepers._ ”

Even the show’s host looks skeptical at the idea of leper colony type establishments for mutants, but Stryker is still going. 

“ _A lot of them don’t even look human! That Azazel looks like the devil himself, and I’ve seen others covered in fur or with skin that looks like rocks. Why would we want these--these . . ._ creatures _around our children? So disturbing to look at with even more disturbing abilities to_ \--”

Charles flips the television off and shoots Raven a stern look in the same vein as the one she gives Kurt or Charles when they’re being particularly stupid. She blinks.

“Raven . . . was Kurt still up while you were watching this?” 

“There’s a distinct possibility . . .”

The telepath sighs, resting his forehead in his hand, the other twitching agitatedly in his lap. “Raven, that isn’t the sort of television he should be watching.”

He swears he can hear the echo of _who’s the older sibling here?_ brushing the edge of his mind and groans quietly.

“I didn’t think he was really paying attention,” she says softly, expression crestfallen. Her skin ripples, peach to blue to olive to blue to reddish and settling at her natural blue, golden eyes averted, staring at her painted fingernails. “Well . . . fuck. How do I . . .?”

Charles shrugs and ignores the muttered “that was a rhetorical question, Mr. Know-it-All, Esquire.” He balls up a napkin and tosses it at her with a retort of, “good going, Rae.”

Raven mumbles incoherencies and buries her face in her arms, red hair sticking up in all directions, seemingly just as frazzled as she looks. Charles opens his mouth and is promptly interrupted by Justin Timberlake declaring that he’s “bringing sexy back,” not that the teen can quite fathom where it buggered off to. He raises a brow and glances around while Raven stands immediately and goes for her purse, murmuring, “yes, he has a little sister” under her breath.

Ignoring the look on her brother’s face, Raven digs through the bag--he refuses to understand why women need such large bags when they carry as little as Raven does--and pulls her phone out on the second repetition of the opening verse and chorus.

“Hey, hey,” she says cheerily into the phone, though there’s still the edge of guilty worry. “So you have a little sister, yeah? How did you, y’know, tell her humans are stupid and don’t listen to them?”

Charles wishes, not for the first time, that Raven had never insisted he stay out of her head, wanting to know what the other person is saying. And who it is, but that’s the nosy bit of him inherited from Mother. Whoever it is responds quickly and Raven rolls her eyes.

“E- _rik_ , I can’t say that to a three year old. Seriously, c’mon, Ruth is a lot younger, right? . . . That isn’t helpful. If you aren’t being helpful what’s your point?” She laughs and Charles raises a brow. “Yeah, he’ll be fine, I’m sure it’ll blow over, just, kinda for the future? No, you don’t need to give him The Speech, he likes you, let’s not ruin that before he’s past the age where he needs a babysitter. So what do you want?” She breezes through statements and questions without pause or allowance for a proper response, and “Erik” must know her well enough to simply answer the question. “No, I told you I’ve got it. I’m going to the store tomorrow and I’ll pick up paint as long as you get the canvases. Yes, I know you’re Mr. Particular about your brands, stop worrying.”

Charles perks up at the mention paint, an idea presenting itself to him immediately after the word. He would only need paint to cheer up Kurt. Blue paint more specifically. And without a word to the still chattering Raven, he grabs one last carrot, jumps up from his seat and pads off into the front hall, where he pulls on a coat, gloves and the like before grabbing the keys and flying out the door.

 

~~~

 

“Kuuurt, hunny, you aren’t supposed to be playing with mummy’s paints,” Charles reprimands, pulling his nephew off the kitchen counter and onto a hip with one hand, retrieving a jar of purple paint with his other.

“Paint!” Kurt squeals with a scrunched up face, wriggling fiercely and determinedly trying to reach another bottle before Charles can drag him away, both little arms and tail surging towards the counter as his uncle whisks him off into the living room and plops him down in front of the tv.

“Pocoyo!” he yells, breaking off mid whine, all his paint adventures instantly forgotten as he climbs to his feet to begin imitating everything he sees.

Back in the kitchen there are about twenty bottles of paint thrown all over the counter, every color of the rainbow represented with a few shades in between scattered about, and none of them with labels. Every single label has been happily ripped off and mushed together in a great big wet ball that Charles can only assume has, like so many other unsanitary things, been in Kurt’s mouth and is now residing right in the middle of the mess.

“Raven,” he calls delightfully, strolling towards the back of the house where his older sister is no doubt hiding, “Your son has destroyed all of your paints.”

Raven glances up from a sketch of an ancient birdcage she’d found last time they cleaned the attic, blinking owlishly then waving her hand. “He didn’t _ruin_ them,” she disagrees pleasantly, “he just likes ripping off the labels. That’s why I marked each one with a sharpie so I know what color it is.”

Charles sighs, turns away from her, and shuffles back toward the kitchen.

The containers are opaque, so Charles has to trust his sister’s system, picking up the ones with a blue dot on their white lids and frowning at them. He narrows his eyes and puts them back down, trying to remember if the one he’d bought had any distinctive markings. He closes his eyes and thinks back to the store, holding the blue body paint in his hands and looking at it from all angles.

A dent.

He’s certain there had been a dent in the side.

“So that’s all I need to find,” he murmurs, bending and examining each in turn until he spots the little ding and plucks it up with a triumphant, “a- _ha_!”

Grinning, the telepath steals upstairs--checking on a thoroughly entertained Kurt, first--, shutting the door and shucking off his clothes, hunting down the paintbrush he’d bought for this process.

Without the label, Charles can’t be sure there aren’t specific requirements for using the paint, though it seems a simple process. He unscrews the lid and dumps the contents into a silver receptacle he’d hidden with the brush.

It can’t be difficult to do this.

Of course not.

Except halfway through the process he’s beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea after all. He’s got blue footprints all over the tiled bathroom floor, he isn’t quite sure how he is going to get his nice clothes back on once he’s finished without messing them up, and his nose itches something fierce only he doesn’t dare touch it for fear of mucking up the paint job on nose and finger.

“This is the worst idea you’ve ever had, Xavier, you genius,” he’s muttering under his breath, having just wrapped a towel they used for paint and hair dye clean up around his waist, when he hears a happy little voice behind him.

“Sharles Blue!” Kurt giggles, waving his hands around excitedly, and teleporting up into his arms when he isn’t picked up fast enough, “Sharles, Kurt blue!”

And as Kurt burbles and coos ever on, Charles decides that just maybe this is the best plan he’s ever come up with. And he can’t wait to see the look on his sister’s face, having left only moments ago with a rushed goodbye through the door in reply to Charles’ admission of nudity at her hurried knock.

“Well, Kurt, what shall us blue boys do today?"

 

~~~

 

It’s almost time for Raven to get home when Charles notices something strange. He’s still flawlessly, perfectly and miraculously blue. He’s fairly certain he shouldn’t be.

The label had said the paint came off with water. He’s given Kurt a bath, in water. He’s washed the dishes, using water. He’s washed a few vegetables for dinner, with water. And yet his hands, that have been immersed in the stuff, are still looking as if he’d only put the paint on five minutes prior.

“Kurt, we have a problem, and no mommy here to fix it,” he says very seriously, scratching experimentally at his wrist. Nothing.

“Probum? Mommy?” Kurt repeats, dropping his toys and giving Charles his full attention for a bit before, apparently having forgotten like he’d already done multiple times that day, he realized his uncle was blue and shouted shrilly, “Blue Sharles, blue Kurt!”

Charles shakes his head wearily, scooping up his young charge and a couple of his toys before heading upstairs, trying to see through the blue tail that keeps wrapping itself around his eyes followed closely by tiny chuckles.

“Kurt, Uncle Charles has to take a shower and try to get this all off, okay?” Charles explains, depositing the boy in a playpen, pretty much useless since he could climb or teleport out anyways, and maneuvering it around until it was sitting outside the bathroom door, “Stay.”

But he gets no answer as Kurt is much too busy having a conversation with his toy or his foot, Charles can’t tell which, so he just heads into the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack and plunging himself into the coldest shower he can manage, because if cold water is good for removing hair dye, shouldn’t it be the same with paint?

 

~~~

 

Several washes and rinses later, Charles is still woefully blue. He stares at his reflection and decides there’s a very specific reason he never joined the Blue Man Group.

“Kurt, what are we going to do?” he moans, pushing his hair back from his face and tightening the towel around his waist. He’s so distressed that it takes a moment for him to realize that he hasn’t received any sort of reply; not a word, not a giggle, not a snort.

“Kurt?” he calls anxiously, rushing out into the hallway, desperately hoping that the small boy hasn’t teleported himself into the refrigerator again. He takes off towards the kitchen, one hand clutching his towel as the other pulls open the fridge door.

“Kurt, you better not be in here,” he huffs, peering around food, expecting to see big yellow eyes peering back at him from behind the bologna.

When Kurt isn’t found in the fridge, Charles hopes against hope and bends over to search through the lower freezer area, grumbling about teleportation as he goes.

“Uhm, Charles what are you doing?” Raven asks suddenly from behind him, in a tone that says she isn’t really asking what he’s doing but rather, where the hell are his clothes and why is he such a vivid shade of blue?

“Oh god, Raven, the paint it won’t come off!” he starts to shout, but his voice quickly dies to a whisper once he’s turned fully around and taken stock of just who is standing behind him.

Raven, as expected, is leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed, looking at him with amusement clear on her face. But behind her is what has all of Charles attention.

The man looms above Raven like a handsome, ancient tree, his expression as impassive as one would expect from a tree. His pale eyes seem somehow dark, though Charles is distinctly aware they’re a pale green, like a backlit leaf. His severe mouth is in a straight, thin line, and Charles flushes hot under that gaze, almost thankful for the blue coating him like an armor.

He can’t be sure if Raven speaks, too transfixed by her companion, who stares right back, blinking only once or twice. The man opens his mouth, finally, and by the affronted look on Raven’s face, she _had_ , in fact, been speaking.

“That’s my paint.”

Charles starts and looks down at his hands. “W-What? I’m sorry, I--”

Stoic-as-a-Tree-Yet-Infinitely-Sexier glances at Raven, that glorious mouth twitching into a frown. Raven quirks a scaled brow and the man gestures to Charles.

“You gave _me_ body paint--which, by the way, does not come out on a canvas the same way, as say, acrylic paint does--and your . . . _he_ got my azure.”

Raven looks back at her brother. “Why did you take Erik’s paint and paint yourself blue?”

Charles frowns, indignant. “I didn’t _take_ his paint--” _Erik, his name is Erik_ “--I bought my own body paint and Kurt tore all the labels off! I thought this was mine. And I painted myself blue to make a point.”

“And that would be . . .?”

“That blue is beautiful.” Charles flushes again and looks at his hands, then back at _Erik_. “I’m sorry about your paint. I’ll buy you--”

“That won’t be necessary.” And of course Charles’ mind picks that moment to notice how gravelly and accented and perfect Erik’s voice is. And how nice it would sound over him in a dim room . . . Charles clears his throat noisily.

“It, ah, won’t?”

“No. You can pay me back in a different manner.”

“Oh. And, um, how would that be?” He reaches out a tentative psychic finger to brush Erik’s mind and is almost immediately rebuked by a wall of steel. With some digging, he’s certain he could breach it, but the man is speaking again.

“Model for me. Let me paint you and the debt is forgotten.”

“I-I’m not--”

“Charles says yes,” Raven cuts in briskly, winking at her brother and nodding at Erik. “He’ll swing by your studio whenever you want him and not be complicated. Won’t you, Charles?”

“I will?”

“He will?”

“He will.” Raven grins and nods yet again, head bobbing up and down so rapidly Charles worries it might fly off. Charles glances at Erik a moment before looking back down at his bare feet.

“I, um, suppose I will.”

“Perfection.”

When Erik smiles, he looks like a particularly handsome shark. A land-tree-shark, Charles decides. The man is a tree shark.

But apparently even tree sharks can be on the tamer, safer side, because the instant a small crack is heard from the living room the man, _Erik,_ Charles firmly reprimands himself, holds his arms out just in time to safely catch the blue cooing mass that is suddenly there.

“‘Rik,” Kurt purrs happily, patting the man’s cheek gently with one hand, reaching around and clinging to his neck with another. He wraps his legs around Erik’s slim waist as Erik adjusts his arms to accommodate the child. Twining his tail around a forearm, he nuzzles up to Erik and says happily, “Eriks home. Kurt miss Erik.”

Erik actually chuckles, snuggling the little boy closer, and Charles can’t help but to wonder what sort of man he, and mostly Raven, has just gotten himself involved with.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So my Dahlink and I obviously started a new fic. This one will probably be only two or three chapters long but we've got it all planned out and we're super duper excited! Eventually we plan on starting Family Portrait again too, so uh, in the meantime I hope you enjoy this!


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